I’m sharing a discussion here in The Daily MICROdose I had with a friend the beginning of 2020 about all the Covid fears and worries of the unknown at the time.
Living through those times had gotten me thinking about how high-octane anxiety I was running at the time and I decided to notate my work I did then with a decades old tape recording I had from another friend’s help back then, and pass it along.
I’m copying that work here, now.
And I think, no matter if someone finds help handling and finding the sweet relief from their anxiety by getting to the bottom of the MINDSET of anxiety this way I present here, or another way, it MUST be done.
So, so many of us these days, youngest to the oldest humans, have been seduced into handling anxiety with a pharma pill—or a cannabis pill, a toke, a drag, a “tincture” drop, same difference.
We’re taught that cannabis is the anxiety-reliever, that it calms down PTSD and severe depression.
And while this is true to some extent, most people don’t realize that it’s only SOME of the medicine, in certain combination with other of the plant that helps with those severe conditions.
And the main ingredient in marijuana cannabis is NOT it. In fact, THC taken in more amounts than the slightest amount, just like the Pharma pills, can CAUSE the PTSD and depression to GET WORSE.
It’s actually the more benign CBD medicine, when used in entourage with the rest of the cannabinoids that helps. And those doses too need to be measured.
So while I think cannabis is marvelous for the initial calming down, quieting of the spirit when anxiety is raging, if it’s used as the only crutch one continually grabs, always uses and the real mind work is refused, I think we have no chance to be free of anxiety’s ravages.
And it does ravage.
Anxiety running rampant damages our immune system and can cause a cascade of failing health.
So in my opinion, the ONLY way to deal, unless you want to sleepwalk through the rest of your life, is to handle and heal anxiety with mindset techniques first and foremost.
I think the most elegant way of working with it to be done with its ravages, working with it to know how to nip it in the bud when it comes around again, is with this particular recording I describe below.
But if another similar mindset-deep technique works for you, go for it too.
Here is my transcript from those fateful days:
How we handle stress is a timely topic these days for sure– which for me stress is usually ANXIETY, so here goes:
I would say us, and our entire world now is in the process of massive change, that’s happening faster than many can handle, our daily routines disrupted, lots of unknowns– would say ripe for the world, and us to be caught in the bloom and spread of fear and crisis…and anxiety stress.
Most of my stress these “covid days” is high anxiety, which I’m happy to say I’ve tamped down for a full 6 days and counting now:-) and though it does have a tendency to not stay tamped down, it’s so much better these days. I forgot what was in my toolbox as I’ve watched, listened, felt…and anxietied!
My normally well, healthy, immune-strong body started having all kinds of other symptoms until even my skin broke out in terribly itchy hives/scabies/shingles?
I’ve felt these days during my anxiety runs that I can’t quite think straight, can’t tell what’s true or not, most certainly my creativity so far on the furthest back-burner it’s off the stove, need to sleep but sleep often interrupted, need to eat but can’t eat or eat incorrectly, often have felt hunger that felt instead like burning, crunching anxiety instead of hunger pangs, could not discern properly and was highly worried “oh my god, I’m coughing I must have covid”, what about my job, my family and friends safety, the world I thought I knew…
And then thinking oh, I’m not allowed to think those thoughts, I’m supposed to be imagining and dreaming all the good and positive realities of opportunity that can come of this for myself, my family, my world and can I?….Well.
It took me a few weeks to figure out I was running high octane anxiety, even amazingly while somewhat making rational decisions– and another few weeks to get a handle on this silent thing that always seems to come from no where, and often leaves as mysteriously as it shows up– until it comes up again.
Figuring this out helped me realize the painful body health symptoms that were starting to erupt for me was because I was running unabated anxiety so I could start the healing process on those.
So realizing what had hit me, I remembered (and now been doing the work, keeping it in front of me) that I did learn a number of techniques quite a lot of years ago that work well for me (probably early 1990’s) after a friend got me listening to a cassette tape title on it.
For you newer beings, a “cassette tape” is an old sound-only recording and playback cartridge that needed it’s own equipment to play…literal magnetic tape on two spindles bound up in a thin plastic “housing” where the tape was wound up on one spindle and in a timed fashion, was re-spooled to the other spindle wheel while riding over a magnetic “tape head” that caused the sound to come out of connected speakers!… I think!
The tape title was/is called “Escaping the Suffocating Web of Anxiety” and since those other years ago, and using special computer equipment, I was able a few years ago to copy that old sound cassette tech into an mp3 file now stored onto my computer…and it was a matter of realizing I still had it on my computer to use.
So I started to listen to the recording again.
Here’s what I have from the recording and a bit of some other I picked up along the way from the 1990’s that makes sense to me:
I learned that anxiety itself is actually caused by one or more of these that I’ve listed here, that it is useful to identify and work with instead of “just anxiety” at some point:
1. undefined (or think we’re not allowed to have and feel) anger, hurt, fear or pity;
2. expectation of error;
3. anticipation of rejection, abandonment, betrayal or humiliation;
4. unprecedented fun, happiness and joy;
5. and giving inappropriate trust in some situations.
I learned we “do it” in a number of ways, where recognizing how we’re doing it is useful:
1. picking fights/getting angry with everything;
2. blaming everyone and everything;
3. going into “oh, poor me, no one understands”;
4. worrying high end;
5. procrastination;
6. trying to be perfect;
7. mechanically by biting nails, twirling hair, nervous ticks, binge drugging (including too much couch-stuck-cannabis that is no longer fun but keeping us glued in the in-between somewhere instead of in our fuller lives…but even including drugging with prozac and vallium, alcohol type stuff…), binge eating, over eating sweet foods, crunchy foods whatever.
I learned what it does when unabated:
1. causes inability to think,
2. the loss of perception, creativity, discernment,
3. loss of knowing what my survival needs are for the moment and loss of my desires beyond the needs,
4. can trigger depressions
5. that physically when allowed to run and run it can be highly medically damaging to our bodies because (and probably also because it’s releasing a lot of adrenalin of fight/flight if it’s undefined fear that is involved that will really mess with the hormones) it releases a neuro peptide in our brains called tryptophan that signals a release of the hormone serotonin– serotonin which in tiny amounts and occasional amounts is a fantastic only-body-made-drug that both calms us down and heightens our awareness at the same time. BUT, because these two compounds of tryptophan and serotonin we’re producing from running anxiety are in the realm of growth hormones, they can then trigger latent medical problems, especially latent diabetes, other hormone issues and various cancers to emerge and grow–aaargh!
And there were a number of techniques noted for “escaping the anxiety“:
RECOGNIZE, ACKNOWLEDGE, FORGIVE and CHANGE
1. Asking our Higher Self to lift the panic if that’s there
2. Recognizing how we “do it” and changing to a less destructive form.
3. Jogging, running (if you do that), going for a slow leisure walk in the beauty of nature (and noticing the gorgeous, brilliant colors of a pollution-less sky, I hope we get to keep that! :-))
4. Recognizing which identity it really is, giving ourselves permission to have it and working with that issue, with the help of Higher Self or other trusted inward presence:
a. if anger, really getting it out, really getting it out of us by either meditatively, or out loud if others cannot hear it– by screaming into pillows, venting and raging and blaming and hating— for 10-20 minutes at a time or regularly.
b. if hurt, discovering what the hurt(s) are, recognizing, feeling the hurt and where those hurts are in the body and healing those, that if there are back (scoliosis) injuries or pains that healing the mindset hurts would be really important (and here is a recording for working with hurt, similar to this Anxiety recording)
c. if fear (which can go hand-in-hand with worry), realizing that in fear and worry and then trying to get perspective back by staying on the “narrow path” by not falling into martyr, righteousness, nobility, blame or a myriad of other things– but staying narrowly focused on really feeling just the fear, imagining the worst and going into it until you emerge on the other side of fear…. which is feeling love/loved/loving
d. if pity, feeling the “I’m so sorry for myself” fully, fully, until can’t feel it anymore– often just 5 minutes and you can’t feel sorry for yourself any more! Or 10 minutes or whatever, but allowing ourselves to just feel sorry for ourselves and letting it out.
e. realizing it’s ok to be happy and have fun on as many days as we can
f. don’t give our trust away to untrustworthy situations or people
5. Get back on a routine, even if it’s a new routine, as quickly as you can manage, helps to mitigate any crisis.
6. An interesting and simple meditation sequence that seriously seems to help at least me (sleep has finally been coming and no more mid-section burning):
Go into meditation and find yourself at a gentle and slow moving large river, get in it and whether can float or not, start floating easily on your back either up or down the river, noticing the colors, the trees foliage overhead, the sky, clouds, the sensation of floating and moving.
You come to a huge, slow moving whirlpool and gently and slowly start to float in a circle with your body around the whirlpool. The circle is like a spiral with the circle your body makes getting smaller and smaller until you pop down into the whirlpool and come out in a gentle, beautiful place in nature or in a calming emptiness.
In front of you standing up out of nowhere is a screen door (but no supports, or brackets, just a tall mesh screen door outline) made of very, very fine shiny, silvery mesh.
The mesh is so fine that when you put your nose up to it, your nose goes through without a mark…
So you veeerrry slowly and with great effort and imagination, puuuush yourself, make your whole body push slooowly through this mesh screen door.
The mesh leaves a full-body-shape sticky, lint-like, thick slime of the anxiety behind the screen you just passed through.
You walk around the door to the back part you just went through, and, like lint, gather up the shape of the anxiety left behind into a basket-ball sized mound off the door.
Then you take the sticky, ooey large ball and between your hands you start to condense the ball between your hands until it’s smaller and smaller and smaller.
You look up and there is your Higher Self and they put their hands over your hands with very small ball between and through all your hands you can just see a bright light now start poking through their and your fingers– and then Higher Self releases the tiny light ball and it floats away.
With your Higher Self you easily both step back through the screen and awaken back to your room.
This screen technique can even be done “on-the-fly” without the river and all… when feeling the anxiety, just imagine it’s between you and that “call” or meeting or whatever is anxiety producing, step through it imagining the anxiety being left behind.
7. Remember our mindset and who we BE and who everyday we’re becoming more.
8. Know I’m beautiful, know I’m loved, feel beautiful, feel loved!
Here is a link to that tape/recording that besides the discussion, actually guides you through the meditation if anyone wants to check it out, it’s digitized by the company and can be purchased as a download (I think $25 or so? worth adding to the toolbox IMO), or you can purchase a month of streaming service with them, or maybe you can find it on eBay too.
And spend what time you can in the beauty of Nature. Being quiet with it can truly heal the Soul!
And here is a list of additional recordings if you are drawn to this work.
Please remember that by presenting here in The Daily MICROdose on the SevenLeafCannabisCoaching website, a list of recommended titles to listen and work with that are part of The Lazaris Material™ does not mean Lazaris, The Lazaris Material™, Concept: Synergy, Inc., Jach Pursel or NPN Publishing, Inc. agrees with or supports cannabis use and its legalities in any way. The opinions expressed below and above the list of titles are mine alone and may or may not express the opinions of others.
Escape the Suffocating Web of Anxiety © NPN Publishing, Inc.
Produced exclusively by Concept: Synergy
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